Deer consume sugar beets, and they are highly attractive to them. Sugar beets are a cultivated variety of the Beta vulgaris plant, primarily grown as a commercial crop for sugar production. This large, pale root vegetable serves as a powerful draw for white-tailed deer and other ungulates due to its unique chemical composition, high palatability, and energy density.
Nutritional Profile and Deer Attraction
The attraction deer have to sugar beets is linked to the plant’s high concentration of carbohydrates. The root portion contains a substantial amount of sucrose, typically 13 to 22 percent, acting as a dense, readily available energy source. This high sugar content is significantly greater than most natural forage, making the beets an irresistible treat when other food sources become scarce.
The high-energy roots are highly digestible, allowing deer to quickly convert the consumed material into the fat reserves needed to endure harsh winter conditions. While the root provides a massive calorie boost, the leafy green tops offer respectable protein content, often around 10 percent, which supports overall herd health and antler growth. Deer initially browse the green tops during the growing season before focusing on the root underground.
As temperatures drop and a hard frost occurs, the starch within the beet root converts more fully into sugar. This timing makes sugar beets a particularly valuable late-season food plot option, providing necessary caloric intake when natural browse is low in quality and quantity. The roots can weigh several pounds at maturity, offering a significant and concentrated meal that deer actively seek out and excavate from the soil.
Using Sugar Beets for Wildlife Management
The strong drawing power of sugar beets is leveraged for wildlife management purposes, including supplemental feeding and attraction. They are widely incorporated into food plots, often planted as a stand-alone crop due to their poor competitive ability against weeds. The goal is to provide a consistent, high-value food source that helps retain deer within a specific area.
Sugar beets can be deployed in various ways, from being left in the ground for natural consumption, to being harvested and distributed as supplemental feed. Commercial attractants utilize processed, shredded sugar beets that can be poured directly onto the ground or placed in feeders. This method provides an immediate, potent lure with a sweet scent trail that draws deer into a desired location.
Timing the planting is important, as the roots generally take about 90 days to reach maturity and provide maximum caloric value. For late-season use, they are often planted in the spring or early summer when colder weather arrives. The energy they provide is beneficial for does recovering from fawning and bucks needing to rebuild reserves after the rut.
Potential Health and Agricultural Impacts
While highly attractive, sugar beet consumption presents challenges to both deer health and commercial agriculture. For farmers, deer browsing represents a serious form of crop damage. Deer consume the tops and partially eat the exposed root, which can lead to the remainder of the root rotting or developing mold, making it unusable for processing.
From a health perspective, the high sugar and carbohydrate load can cause digestive upset if consumed in excessive amounts, especially if the deer are not gradually acclimated to the new diet. As ruminants, deer rely on a specific microbial balance in their stomach to process forage. A sudden change in diet can disrupt this balance and lower the rumen’s pH, negatively affecting the digestive enzymes.
Issues like acidosis are generally associated with high-volume consumption in unacclimated herds. When planted in food plots and consumed in a mixed foraging environment, the benefits of the concentrated energy source often outweigh the risks. Wildlife managers primarily focus on ensuring a slow transition to a high-carbohydrate diet, while farmers face economic loss from the physical destruction of their crop.